Free Download Detective Fiction Online Book PDF
ByCharles J. Rzepka
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“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” –Haruki Murakami
Synopsis
Detective Fiction is a clear and compelling look at some ofthe best known, yet least-understood, characters and texts of themodern day. Charles J. Rzepka traces the history of the genre fromits modern beginnings in the early eighteenth century, with thecriminal broadsheets and ‘true’ crime stories of TheNewgate Calendar, to its present state of diversity, innovation,and worldwide diffusion, in a manner that students and scholarsalike will find readable and provocative. The book focuses particularly on the relationship of detectivefiction's emerging ‘puzzle-element’ to theinvestigative methods of the nascent historical sciences, and topopular cultural attitudes toward history, particularly in GreatBritain and the United States. In addition, the author examines thespecific impact of urbanization, the rise of the professions, brainscience, legal and social reform, war and economic dislocation,class-consciousness, and changing concepts of race and gender.Extended close readings of the classics of Detective Fiction inseveral ‘Casebook’ essays devoted to seminal works byPoe, Doyle, Sayers, and Chandler show in detail how the genre hasresponded to these influences over the last century and a half.They also serve to introduce students to a variety of currentcritical approaches. Undergraduate students of Detective and Crime Fiction and ofgenre fiction in general, will find this book essentialreading. ‘Cool, savvy, and utterly compelling: every page ofCharles J. Rzepka’s magnificent history of detective fictiondisplays the forensic panache of the true connoisseur of murder.Commanding an unrivalled breadth of reference and depth of insight,the book is a must-read for everyone interested in detectivefiction.’ Nicholas Roe, University of St Andrews ‘In this sustained analysis of the emergence anddevelopment of detective fiction in England and America, CharlesRzepka has produced both a compelling cultural history and askilful demonstration of what Poe aptly called “the moralactivity which disentangles”. It will become an indispensableguide to serious students of detective literature.’ Ronald R. Thomas, University of Puget Sound
